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Small Islands Giving Off Spam

The anti-spam investigators of McAfee have been tracing a tendency they've dubbed "spam island-hopping." It entails the utilization of net domains from distant countries to camouflage the bulk e-mail drives.

Usually, spammers have exploited elite domains like dot-com, dot-biz or dot-info in their operation. They are presently exploiting the domain names of tiny islands for Internet links in their spam operation, the security firm stated. McAfee has also successfully tracked the spam campaign connected with the Isle of Man and Tokelau islands, along with others.

Utilizing an insignificant but first-rate domain alters the competition, making it tougher to differentiate spam from genuine e-mails merely by scrutinizing e-mail instructions, as per McAfee. spammers are attempting to dodge anti-spam applications incapable of stopping emails coming from such addresses.

The movement was detected when McAfee investigators observed a huge rise in the application of .st, the best domain for Sao Tome and Principe, islands located near Western Africa, the firm declared. Tracing the track of proof left behind by spammers using the uncommon domain, investigators averred they were able to track the "movement round the world." The firm reported to be presently experiencing a deluge of spam coming from these islands.

McAfee's senior product manager, Steve Steinhauer, informed SCMagazine.com that several spam servers utilizing this method are not really situated in the nations they profess to belong to.

"I am sure that the majority of spam screens are still ignorant of these top-quality overseas domain names," he averred. "The emails are similar to the Viagra advertisement; with everybody utilizing high class domains. This latest tendency is one more instance of spammers' persistent operation to extend their exploitation of net domains everywhere."
The under mentioned tiny islands have been marked by McAfee as being preferred by spammers: Tokelau, Tuvalu, Cocas (Keeling) Islands, American Samoa, Tonga, the Isle of Man, and Sao Tome and Principe. This recent spamming drift describes the necessity to employ advanced spam spotting methods.

Related article: “Loopholes did not cause online banking thefts”: ICBC

» SPAMfighter News - 11/4/2006

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